| Newsletter
April 2006 Article |
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| Criminal
Prosecution Ups the Ante |
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An enforcement
officer from South Texas writes:
"I have a case that started in 1999 by the
_____County Health department against a trailer park in
_____ Texas. I became involved in April of 2002. From 1997
to 2001 the trailer park had charges filed on them twenty
times in JP court for nuisance violations and discharge of
sewage to the surface. The parties involved paid small
fines but continued to discharge sewage and trash the
place. I received a complaint from a relative of one of
the residents of the trailer park that sewage was all
around her home and under the home. I arrived and found
the park to be in a deplorable condition with sewage
everywhere. I found a lake of raw sewage 100 feet by 200
feet and one foot deep. The sewage tested out to be
600,000 colonies per 100 milliliters. I took further
samples that came back with over 1.6 million colonies per
100 milliliters. I photographed the entire location and
filed charges of violation of the Texas Water Code for
discharge from a point source [Texas Water Code Sec.
7.145] and Intentional or Knowing Unauthorized Discharge
and Knowing Endangerment [Texas Water Code Sec. 7.152]
against the owner of the trailer park. The case set idle
in the District Attorney's office for two years. In the
meantime the trailer park owner facing these felony
charges spent close to $500,000 to bring this
park into compliance. This park, which now has a package
treatment plant, is still in violation of laws concerning
the operation of that package plant. The good news is that
finally in January 2006 this case came to closure. The
owner came to court and plead guilty to the charges and
agreed to pay a fine of $60,000, make restitution to the
county for $1,000, to perform 300 hours community service
and be on probation for five years."
TIDRC response:
"I'd call that a
total victory. Do you think the fact the case was sitting
at the DA's office all that time helped push the owner
into spending the cash on fixing the place? Reckon the
owner is raising his rates to folks wanting to park
trailers there? Great victory for the good guys."
Enforcement officer response:
"Yes he has raised his rates, and most of his clients
are undocumented Mexican workers and their families. That
is why he got by with the pollution for so long. If they
complained he would move them out and move more in."
Moral:
Sometimes filing cases in JP courts work well, especially
when the violator is willing to correct his or her behavior. But when
a soft approach doesn’t work, as in this case where the
violator basically continued to ignore the law, filing as
felonies based on the same facts (or here, filing with
more facts and good testing data) can have good results.
Intentional or Knowing Unauthorized Discharge and Knowing
Endangerment [Texas Water Code Sec. 7.152] is a big deal.
The penalties top-out at a fine between $1,000 and
$250,000 and confinement of up to 10 years. The penalties
could be even higher had residents become sick. The fact
that the case was dormant in the DA’s office for a
couple of years is not unusual; many enforcement officers
face that situation around Texas. But the fact that the DA
didn’t immediately decline prosecution put the slow
pressure on the property owner to improve conditions. In
the owner’s mind, that felony charge was out there just
ticking away, which is of course why the pre-trial
improvements were made. The eventual finding of guilt and
the penalty is the cherry on top. It will help this and
other trailer park owners in this county to remember to
provide sanitary housing to residents. There’s no
telling what future leaders of Texas will come out of the
colonias, trailer parks and other properties housing the
Texas immigrant community. It’s appropriate that these
future leaders and tax payers not have to play in raw
sewage while they are growing up. Regardless of where one
stands on the immigration issue, we can all agree that
state sanitation laws should be followed everywhere. When
initial enforcement is met with non-compliance, pushing to
the next level of law enforcement can work wonders, as
this case shows.
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